Description: The discussion is anchored in the principles of visual anthropology, a sub-discipline of cultural anthropology where visual elements (photographs and ethnographic films) help clarify, represent and archive cultural knowledge. At the heart of this discussion is the question: how do we create an infrastructure to visually explore, document, and disseminate diverse cultural knowledge? Lecture/Discussion: Steve

Description: Dorothea Lange, the Great Depression’s most famous photographer, and her husband, Paul Taylor documented the plight of California’s dispossessed, culminating in 1939 in American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion.” The Common Ground Faculty Cohort will read Jan Goggan’s scholarly work on California’s developing New Deal narrative and discuss her take on this photographic expose of immigrant suffering

Description: The Central Valley is often referred as the bread basket of the world. Our discussion will center on the relationship between food processes and community identities. Key Questions: What is the process of getting food from farm to table in the Central Valley and how does that process inform our community identity? How does the

Description: This discussion centers around the way cultural identity is represented and enhanced through works of art, film, and other expressions. Key Questions: Who has the authority to decide what constitutes a primary work of cultural production that aids in the formation of collective identity? What is the relationship between a need for community identity and

Description: This seminar will explore notions of democratic citizenship, civic virtue, and civic republicanism in the context of the multicultural of the Central Valley. We will consider the following issues: How do different interests and identities clash, negotiate, and accommodate each other within the context of a modern liberal nation state? How do community-based notions of

Description: This topic focuses on home, identity and belonging as well as the different ways that “place” is and can be conceived. This will lead us to engage in this idea of what our “place” in the Central Valley means, through the written word, images, and other kinds of representations. Events LECTURE: February 18, 2015 from